Zombie Survival MMO?

[feather240]

Well here is my idea for it, it would be an ZFPSMMORPG, try pronouncing that.

The game would begin with you randomly starting with anywhere from 8-14 real players, at least two players would be medics and the rest would be militia of some kind. They start in an abandoned building and need to move to a secure location, all they know is that it is directly east of their current location, however the street that is outside is a direct path to it. That would be approximately how it would happen, but the path and safe house would be different each time.

The game would mainly consist of easy scavenging missions, intermediate delivery missions,hard defensive missions where you have to help protect a starting safe house, expert missions where you clear a building (or destroy it), master missions where you actually need to hold the area from enemy's until reinforcements come in, and elite missions where you have to take out a highly urbanized building like a mall, stadium, or school. Although there would be variations on which ones you get those would be the main of each level, and having a different class would change the kind of missions your needed for, using a group makes it easier, but the more people you have the less money you get.

The game would also have a faction system, although in the beginning there are independent NPC safe houses that are your very first way point, but they can be bought out by other factions as a way to collect members faster. Factions can assign capitol safe houses that are main bases and choose leaders for minor safe houses. Leaders can assign missions for players to help their safe house with, because well established safe houses with a strong economy (Not a single house you moron.) are very well spaced and there are no quick ways to get from one to the other, the one you're at will become like a main base to you and you'll quickly learn to remember the names of the small active population their.In this way you'll all become closer you faction. A kind of localization for the personal player.

Sorry if their are errors, ^_^

 

[B12]

Sounds like great fun, but please tell me you wont have to play the 'find people and hunker down' route all the time. It would be nice to be the kind of person some of us would actually be... who stay as far from the zombies as possible. Theres a ton of zombie types out there, but everyone seems to assume its the sort that can tell where you are and is just waiting for a buzzer to sound to come after you. It would be nice to play with the less intelligent zombies that sort of mill about at important locations (hospitals, drug stores, shoppin marts) that you CAN confront if you have to provide for a large group, but you could also go loner and pillage things you need from peoples houses, which would be inefficient in a large group 'cause there wouldn't be enough to go around.

What I'm saying is that this theoretical game would need some loner stealth elements, for the people who chose not to go combat and instead skulk through peoples backyards and avoid any large amounts of zombies. Perhaps these zombies would be able to tell where you are for the people who want to team up and make forts and fight them off, but they arent as attracted to one lone survivor as they are to the group of 20 or so who just made camp a little ways away. And even if they did decide to converge on the loner, they should have a chance at escaping if they can climb/run/dissapear down a manhole in time. Seriously, this is probably how I would deal with a zombie apocalypse if I hadnt died in initial infection.

Funny how these ideas spring from people when we get talking about it.

Maybe you could allow player to be zombies as well who have the ability to lead and idle zombies they find, who could organize assaults on player bases to keep things interesting. Couldn't make them too strong so they would try to take on the world themselves, they would need minions, but also the minion zombies would have to be weak enough that they require numbers and strategy to work efficiently.

Okay, thats all for now.

 

[JRCB]

How about a game like MAG, in a city, with a zombie theme?

 

[Kuchinawa212]

That sounds fun! But I want a crowbar. I ain't fight'n no zombies with no crowbar.

 

[Paulrus_Keaton]

It would be my Warcraft.

 

[iseestupid]

How about a zombie survival MMO in which...
You can be either a Zombie or Human, whatever you choose to be. As you eliminate players of the opposite team, you gain experience. With that experience you buy better skills and such. With these skills you may more effectively eliminate the enemies to get more experience to get more skills towards a seemingly never-ending cycle. It would be set up like a normal city with buildings, streets, malls, police-stations, and hospitals. Once inside a building you can barricade it to prevent zombies from entering, but at some point humans cannot enter.
Here's the twist. Whenever you leave the game, your character stays, just taking a nap or standing there. It's like you never really leave, you just wait. So if you're human, the zombies can break into your building and tear you to shreds, and if you're a zombie, humans can kill you while you do nothing to resist.
Humans that are killed may rise from the dead as zombies as many times as they want, and dead zombies may too rise from the dead. But humans can get a kind of drug that turns zombies into humans for a while, before they die again.
Weapons and ammo are not easy to find, you must spend a large amount of time finding them, and at the start, you won't even be very good with them. You have to purchase upgrades to have better accuracy ratings, but it will all be worth it to get rid of zombies quicker.
Theoretically, zombies can eliminate all humans if they have a plan, but more humans can always be created to fight off zombies.
The map will be very large so that humans (usually) will not be clustered together, and there actually is a survival element.

Wait, I think that has already been made.

 

[UncleOvid]

Fuck. Me. Yes. Seriously, I kinda loathe MMO's, but a proper ZMMO (pronounced, naturally, /zee-moe/) really could convince me to spend gobs and gobs of money. I do tend to go on and on, so:

Spoiler: Blahdi blahdi blah

I'm kind of a zombie "purist" of the Max Brooks/George Romero school, so no fast zombies, no zombie "types," head-shot-only kills, instant infection when bitten, that sort. I also was a member on Urban Dead for a while, and I thought they handled a lot of things well, at least as it evolved. I'd also like to see it as "realistic" as possible, so I'm not too keen on experience levels or developer-designed "factions" or "guilds" or whatever, and I'd love targeted damage (and one of these days, there's going to be a game that really handles that well). And I don't understand the point of story-oriented MMORPGs -- once the plot's resolved, why keep playing the game, except for some contrived extension. I think a World War Z-type endless-holocaust setting would work just fine. If you need some sort of end goal to keep you motivated, well, read on...

You begin the game in a random building in The City with, say, a gun and a medkit. The goal is to hook up with the other survivors and clear out the city. This would involve finding other survivors, grouping together and barricading and eventually fortifying, not just a building, but an expanding section of the city. Resources -- weapons, medicine, vehicles -- are limited, so you also have to risk foraging. A variety of survival skill mechanics should be implemented -- not just fighting and healing, but barricading, driving, and building (so you can create shops or clinics once your safe zone gets large enough). These could be character intrinsics that could be upgraded through use (to a limited extent), but are better enhanced with better tools, which you have to forage for.

Zombies are wicked dumb. And slow. Mostly they trudge aimlessly until they hear or see a survivor, and then they beeline. They also moan to attract other zombies. I think that would be an awesome mechanic -- imagine wandering a blessedly unpopulated street, scrounging for a box of ammo or gas for your generator, a couple miles away from the safe zone because the surrounding area's already been picked clean, when you hear "Unnnhhh" from some unseen source, immediately followed by a full-throng answering chorus a block away. Between you and home. At night. Tell me you wouldn't just pee.

I'd handle death thus: you get bitten by a zombie, you turn. Zombies can't do much, so you can't use tools and you can't really run. The only ways to turn back are to get killed, or to EAT BRAINS (to simulate zombie hunger). And of course, coming back means losing all your equipment. It's brutal maybe, but I figure being a Zed should suck, so people will have an incentive to stick to the "survival" aspect.

I see an argument for capped server populations, but I think you can make them high and offset it by introducing, say, 50 Zeds per every new player. Of course, rendering a teeming horde like that is gonna be a real *****. But then what's a zombie game without teeming hordes.

And you could make special PvP cities with "Quislings" -- living people who think they're zombies, so they want to kill and eat, but they have the capabilities of the living. (I'm totally stealing the idea from Brooks, but I can't remember if that's the term he used. Help?)

Random thoughts:
-Make zombie calling a skill. Use it as a decoy to distract them from a group of foragers, or lure them into an ambush by hunters.
-Some preset classes: Medic, Mechanic, Soldier, Carpenter, with slightly boosted relevant skills. Emphasis on "slightly." A bunch of beefed-up, endgame Frank West types would totally blow the whole thing.
-I think it goes without saying that it would have to be a Fallout 3-style FPS format. And since this is my lovely, undead fantasy, fuck it. Let's go with randomly generated cities, no building off-limits, vehicles -- hell, upgradable vehicles (with the right parts, of course) -- destructible buildings and terrain...*drool, slaver*...
-And for those still worried about some existentialist, what's-it-all-for goal, maybe there could be a Scientist class and a related meta-goal wherein you try to find a cure for the virus, which could involve capturing zombies "alive." Or, for the truly masochistic, a time-limit on reclamation. If you don't cleanse the city in, say, a month, the Air Force comes and carpet-bombs everything, Return of the Living Dead-style. Hee hee.

EDIT: -Time offline would work like Urban Dead, i.e., you're vulnerable, so you better be in a secure spot when the lights go out. Easy enough when you've got a sizable Safe Zone to head back to, but damn scary when you show up in a newly generated city.
-On a related note, I would enable friendly fire. It makes drawing a bead on a Zed more nerve-wracking when you might miss and waste the poor dude running from it. "But what about griefers?" you cry, but hear me out. Enhanced skills wouldn't go high enough for anyone to take on more than a few people, and since their own survival depends on the survival of the city, it's against their interest to sabotage things. Arguably, griefers are part of the experience (see my quisling note above), and it's vital for the community to snuff them out quickly and/or keep them from getting decent equipment.

Maybe it could work, maybe not, but the things I want to accomplish with this sort of game would be large scale cooperation, organic development and problem solving, resource management, and pants-befouling suspense.

By the way, while it may not be much direct help to the conversation, I have to add my voice to the chorus recommending Max Brooks' World War Z. If you haven't read it, by all means, do. Hands down the BEST zombie fiction around. In my books, there is Romero, there is Brooks, and there is the nameless and distant, distant horde.

 

[UncleOvid]

Well here is my idea for it, it would be an ZFPSMMORPG, try pronouncing that.

Duh. Obviously, it's ziffpissmumorpuhguh.
x _ x

 

[ironmace2.0]

Hell's yeah this is how I would do it.

Servers of 16-24 you have to be in a party of 4 ( less online npc's ) different skills barricades,medic, mabye sentry...,wepon skiils more damage with different wepons (guns and chainsaws and things like that),mabye someone who can get vechiels operational(cars tanks mabye just to have awsomeness)and a cook that increases food power.

You just have to survive by eating and drinking but if you stay in one place for to long the threat lvl goes up every hour you stay there(dosent count if offline) zombies get stronger and more of them come. If you die as a human your character becomes a special infected (have the ones from left 4 dead) and more like one that can go inviseble for a short amount of time high health low damage and one that can walk through walls but low health and high damage.

copy incap from left 4 dead. get rid of tank and witch zombies just tank is to overpowerd for this and witch just wouldnt work.
And mabye the ability to disapear for a few seconds say ninja class for humans.

And safe zones to buy suplies buy selling items you find traveling.
You can start as zombie and they have a safe zone you spawn.

And mabye for special events you can atack safe zones but have like 10 second death resistance when you spawn to you know to be fair.

Skills work like you go down a set of them like assualt rifles and they become more powerful or have a bigger mag and get atachments. Sentrys more of them and more damage and bigger mag. Medics here more faster. You get the picture skills get restarted after death.

Yeah I think that would be awesome.

 

[Sparrow]

Ahem. Lads, you've been beaten to it.

http://www.deadfrontier.com/

It's actually pretty good. Grab a party of twenty people and pilfer some houses.

 

[dontworryaboutit]

Think about that. Maybe sometime in the near future, we'll see a zombie MMO, set in a huge interactive, zombie infested city where you and 20 other people have to gather supplies, ammo, and hunker down where ever you can until help arrives. Or maybe you have to get to the extraction point.

How would you do it?

Maybe 10-20 people spread over the city with a couple NPC's per server. not hundreds of players. It would be too easy.

I've thought this over multiple times, but I always come to the conclusion that it probably wouldn't work out. But that doesn't stop me imagining my grizzled, grim and bedraggled character standing outside his ramshackle town staring off over the wasteland with a heavily clouded, purple sky overhead.

Then the epic music kicks in as he racks the slide on his shotgun and starts walking off into the distance. Roll credits.

 

[kevin_kaya]

Not REAL MMO, and not 3d xD

 

[SilverZ]

It would have to have RAGE virus style zombies in order to be any good. Each server would have 10 channels that hold 100 people and you can go back and forth between at your own whim. When you spawn the first time you are on a random location in the map they may or may not be completely compromised, same when you respawn from death. However when you die unless you are torn to shreds you watch your character try to kill your friends for 10 minutes or until it or your friends are dead. You would be able to kill other survivors. Zombies would have to outnumber people in the server at least 100-1. It would be possible to kill all the zombies but the game resets the zombie count to the 100-1 ratio every week. It would have to have a very good salvaging system, with unlimited access to any building in the game. You would be able to fortify a position but theres always the chance that a huge number of zombies can compromise your location. When you change channels on the server you spawn exactly where you were no matter how compromised the location is in that channel. There will only be a set ammount of supplies after every reset based upon the number of players that are usually in the server. There would be 10-52 maps that are randomized upon the server reset so that the game doesn't get boring or repetative and they always cycle through all the maps before they can be used a second time, the order in which they appear will always be different up to the limit of the combinations due to the number of maps. When you start or when you respawn you dont have a weapon or any supplies until you can find them yourself. There would be no global chat and whisper chat would only work if you are in the same room as the other person. The zombies will always find a way to compromise any fortified locations 12 hours before the servers reset unless they were all killed before that. The higher player population in an area increases the zombie population. The day/night sequence would take 12 hours for a full game day giving 2 days and 2 nights every real time day.

Yes I've thought about this alot and if I were to learn how to make games I would make this, while this is unlikely I am just hoping that someone will make it before I get off my ass and learn to properly code and program games. But if someone would make this game you gotta admit it would be pretty good. Then again I doubt we have the technology to make it come to fruition.

Also it would probably have to play like an FPS.

this is an epic idea and it would work... although i like 200/1 over 100/1 it would make it harder... oh and barricades should be able to be made out of anything.. including car doors and doors torn from useless buildings. or just yarn

 

[GamingAwesome1]

I want a good zombie survival MMO NAO!

Dead Frontier is the closest thing I've had so far and while that game is fun and unique is just not what I wanted.

 

[Yegargeburble]

snip

Resi is not survival, it's action-horror. More action than horror. There really aren't any survival games besides Survival Kids (GBA) and the Lost in Blue series.

If a game has A) A "needs" meter (such as food, water, etc) and B) doesn't have ammo coming out the yin-yang, it's a survival game.

So you surviving the Sims?


EDIT: (Im not trying to be an ass/argue im just poking fun. I know what you mean of course!)

I knew someone was going to point that out. Ha, in a way, yes, The Sims is a survival game. But not survival in the sense I was thinking; play Lost in Blue or Survival Kids to see what I mean. Both rather mediocre games, but it has the basic mechanics I'm thinking of.

I dunno... when I play the Sims, the little characters should feel horror. God knows I kill enough of 'em... I mean... I think I'll try those two games.

 

[bastyaan]

I would totally play a game like that.
It sounds awesome. Zombies are awesome.

 

[Deadarm]

It would have to have RAGE virus style zombies in order to be any good. Each server would have 10 channels that hold 100 people and you can go back and forth between at your own whim. When you spawn the first time you are on a random location in the map they may or may not be completely compromised, same when you respawn from death. However when you die unless you are torn to shreds you watch your character try to kill your friends for 10 minutes or until it or your friends are dead. You would be able to kill other survivors. Zombies would have to outnumber people in the server at least 100-1. It would be possible to kill all the zombies but the game resets the zombie count to the 100-1 ratio every week. It would have to have a very good salvaging system, with unlimited access to any building in the game. You would be able to fortify a position but theres always the chance that a huge number of zombies can compromise your location. When you change channels on the server you spawn exactly where you were no matter how compromised the location is in that channel. There will only be a set ammount of supplies after every reset based upon the number of players that are usually in the server. There would be 10-52 maps that are randomized upon the server reset so that the game doesn't get boring or repetative and they always cycle through all the maps before they can be used a second time, the order in which they appear will always be different up to the limit of the combinations due to the number of maps. When you start or when you respawn you dont have a weapon or any supplies until you can find them yourself. There would be no global chat and whisper chat would only work if you are in the same room as the other person. The zombies will always find a way to compromise any fortified locations 12 hours before the servers reset unless they were all killed before that. The higher player population in an area increases the zombie population. The day/night sequence would take 12 hours for a full game day giving 2 days and 2 nights every real time day.

Yes I've thought about this alot and if I were to learn how to make games I would make this, while this is unlikely I am just hoping that someone will make it before I get off my ass and learn to properly code and program games. But if someone would make this game you gotta admit it would be pretty good. Then again I doubt we have the technology to make it come to fruition.

Also it would probably have to play like an FPS.

this is an epic idea and it would work... although i like 200/1 over 100/1 it would make it harder... oh and barricades should be able to be made out of anything.. including car doors and doors torn from useless buildings. or just yarn

My first idea was actually closer to 10,000-1 but decided it would just be too overbearing on the people playing it.

 

[Desert Tiger]

It'd have to be HUGE.

We're talking "holy shit I just saw another guy" huge. Only then would it be true survival.